


Methods of Control

by luchia



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Obsessive-Compulsive, Relationship Study, or something
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-16
Updated: 2013-10-16
Packaged: 2017-12-29 13:54:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1006223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luchia/pseuds/luchia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erwin comes back with a bloody stump instead of an arm and Levi does the only thing he can to keep him safe because <i>clean means safe</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Methods of Control

Levi knows before a single mouth even opens. Soldiers without horses, people with wounds and barely stumbling forward, sure, that's normal for them. What isn’t normal is the way they move through the gate. It's a loose formation, barely following the system that’s kept them safer than anything they tried before Erwin took control. Levi doesn't even have to look at the front of the column to know Erwin won’t be there.

They always knew this would happen. The only question left between them had been who’d die first. Well, that and how long the other would last.

The estimate on that is pretty fucking short.

Levi walks forward, stands in the middle of the road and waits for them to reach him. Someone has to be at the head of Erwin’s formation. He’ll probably be shit at it, but Levi knows the truth. Nobody will ever be able to take Erwin Smith’s place, so it might as well be someone who at least understands what that place was.

One of their – his, he supposes – soldiers rides forwards in an unexpected burst of energy, looking depressingly relieved to see Levi. “Captain, you’re supposed to be staying off of your ankle!” she says. He can’t remember her name. It’s odd. Levi almost always remembers names.

“I’m fine. What happened?” Levi asks.

“We retrieved Eren, things were so hectic – I’m not fully informed on the situation,” the soldier says. “The commander can tell you more, when he’s awake.”

Levi has no idea what he’s feeling. It’s sharp, lightning straight through his carotid artery, wide warm entry with a small cold exit to the wound, like a bullet to the throat. “He’s alive?”

She nods, motions behind her as if Levi can pick him out from this distance. “He's weak, but alive,” she confirms, beaming at the idea that Erwin survived. Or at the idea that you _can_ survive. “We’re taking him to the hospital, you’re welcome to come. He made us promise to keep you off your ankle, so I could arrange-”

“I need to know the regiment’s status,” Levi says instead, but strategy isn’t his thing, it’s. Levi kills shit, that’s what he’s best at. Hospitals definitely don’t want someone who kills shit inside of them. “I need to know.”

Fuck, he can’t remember what he needs to know.

“Understood, sir,” she says, either too new to understand exactly what’s going on or too polite to admit it. Fucking everyone knows, probably know more than Levi does, but he doesn’t need to know more, he just lives. And lives. And lives. And apparently, so does Erwin.

She tells him, speaks of casualty rates, dead friends and so many deaths and wounded and fuck, Levi had no idea exactly was going on over the wall, but this shit is fucking insane. Even with the limited amount of information the soldier has (and he knows her name, he _knows it_ ), Levi has trouble fully understanding what he’s hearing.

But then she says that Erwin’s arm was fucking _bitten off_ and Levi says, “Did you wash the wound?” There’s death from blood loss, and there’s infections, and there’s parasites, and he doesn't know if getting rabies from a fucking titan is a problem, who knows what’s inside of their mouths.

The soldier’s left eyebrow rises, and she says, “That wasn’t our primary objective at the time.” And they went out ill-equipped anyway. Cautiously, hesitantly, she puts a hand on his shoulder. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?”

“I’m sure,” Levi says, because he has a mission.

The column is already walking around them, and Levi can see how they straighten at the sight of him, how they nod, hear greetings with heart in them. They’re triumphant, but there are enough missing faces that it feels bittersweet.

He lets them pass, keeps his eyes open, and doesn’t react when he sees Erwin slumped over a shoulder, unconscious and pale and missing his right arm. And Levi doesn’t give a fuck because he focuses, he feels, and Erwin is breathing. They’re both breathing.

Levi stays standing in the street, releases his informant back into the column, watches his – their – soldiers pass by until they’re rounding the corner, splitting apart. Some head back to barracks. Some head to the hospital.

The people lining the streets don’t filter back in behind them like usual. It takes Levi a moment to realize that’s because they’re staying away from him. Even out of uniform with absolutely zero involvement in what his people just went through, they treat him like he’s one of them, like he went through the same hell.

He sighs. At least they understand that he’s a soldier, in or out of equipment.

There’s an open path for him down the street, wide and ready, eyes watching for him.

Levi turns, sinking back into the crowd he stepped out from, and disappears as well as he can with a fucked up ankle. He has a mission, after all, and it doesn’t have a single fucking thing to do with anything the civilians need to know.

\---

Now that Levi doesn’t have the troops, doesn’t have any responsibility, doesn't have anyone he needs to prioritize or behave for or be responsible for or fight for, not right now, his hands itch. His mind repeats, over and over, _infection. Bacteria. Disease. Sickness. Death. Death. Death._

Getting into Erwin’s apartment is usually only a matter of climbing up to the second floor and slipping through an always open window, but Levi can’t climb because of his ankle, and also because he has two bags of newly-purchased supplies in his arms. He knows where the key is anyway. It just takes longer to get in that way because he might have to deal with _people_ , and he’d rather not. He’d be able to do that if he wasn’t nervous about his feet touching the ground, about wondering what exactly is in this dirt, about whether anyone has been sick nearby and if there’d be problems if Levi relocated them before Erwin gets anywhere near here.

He knows it’s irrational and he knows it’s fucking stupid, he _knows_ , but clean means safe.

Levi climbs the stairs carefully, because he needs his ankle. His bags aren’t heavy so much as they’re cumbersome, so it’s easy enough to pick the key up from where Erwin keeps it beneath a loose bit of woodwork on his windowsill. He tries to hold it lightly, keeps it pinched between his thumb and index finger and the moment the door is unlocked he carefully drops it back into its hiding place, carefully covers it again, and he’ll wash his hand and the doorknob first thing after he shoulders the door open.

Erwin’s apartment is made up of a kitchen, a living room, a bathroom, and a bedroom.

Levi washes his hands, and he moves on to the doorknob because Erwin will only have one hand and what if he moves that hand from the doorknob to his bandages and it’s not clean and who fucking knows what could happen then? He brought plenty of materials, vinegar and baking soda and lye and even went for lemon, bought a fucking dozen of them. He’s supposed to keep off of his ankle, but that’s fine. He’ll probably be kneeling for most of this anyway.

It’s all down to scrubbing, and honestly he needs to do other things before the doorknob because he’ll have to just come back and clean it again (and again and again), but he starts there anyway.

He never really noticed the doorknob. Nobody notices them. That’s where danger is, it’s in the things he misses, and clean means safe, so he’s going to clean every single fucking thing in this apartment before Erwin comes back. And then he’ll clean Erwin. And himself. And then the apartment again because after he gets them cleaned up the apartment will be dirty because filth doesn’t just disappear, it just gets moved somewhere else, and then Levi has to keep chasing it so he can at least keep it somewhere contained and clean means safe and _fuck_. Levi balls up the soaking cloth in his hands and throws it across the room, hears it splat against the wall and watches it slide to the floor and it's so fucking unsatisfying, he wants to _break something_ , but then he'd have to fucking clean that up too, wouldn't he?

Usually, when this happens, Erwin is there, and Erwin is such a fucking _fact_ in his mind that if he says it’ll be okay after one wash, it is. Usually. Unless it really does need cleaning. Levi can push it aside if there are more immediate threats than infection and disease and every other creeping horror found on an unwashed floor, so it’s not an issue when there’s a fucking titan trying to eat him and his troops. Then, there are more important things to do if he wants to keep people from dying.

Levi moves on to the floor.

Usually, when this happens, Erwin is with him, talking, waiting it out with him, and there’s not a single fucking thing special about how he does it, he’s just. He’s just _there_. He just makes it better, he’s a second set of eyes, reassures him it’s clean ( _safe_ ) and Levi wasn’t always a mess. But that’s a lie. He’s always been a fucking _catastrophe_ , only skill he has is killing, he's good at seeing angles and speeds and germs and targets, feeling inertia and arcs and things he didn’t even know had names until he was seventeen staring into Erwin Smith’s young ambitious inescapable eyes as he said, “Kill humans and die, or kill titans and die.”

Levi was seventeen and feral and fully capable of lunging forward, sliding into Erwin’s good but fallible defense and getting a knife or two into his eyes and brain. But there was something unshakable about him. At first sight, Levi knew there was something about Erwin that could never be moved, or shaken, or broken, even at that age. And he wanted it. Every arc has a center point and every attack has a target and every motion has a direction and Levi didn’t have one, until Erwin stood in front of him and said, “Fight with me, and your death will mean something.”

It was always death he expected, for either of them. What they both expected. Fight to their last breath, live to try and move humanity at least one step forward beyond the walls.

And he wasn’t this bad. Levi can fucking deal with this, he can, but _fuck_ , the enemy he has to worry about attacking Erwin is microscopic, the devil is in the details, and Levi fights for Erwin. He fights for their soldiers, he fights for freedom, he fights and kills and cuts flesh mercilessly as directed, ignores the burn of smoking blood against his skin when he charges through the enemy. The vinegar he washes with stings the cuts beneath his fingernails. Levi wasn’t this bad, and then he joined up, and it was pure chaos because in the beginning Erwin wasn’t in control and Erwin should be in control of everything.

The first expedition Levi left on, the goal was nothing but surveillance, and they’d charged through the gates as a loose glob of horses and humans and easy prey for any titan that came near. They’d come near, of course. Fuck, they’d come near and Levi watched friends he’d graduated with be ripped apart in front of him while he was grounded for a second, just a _second_ , and titan blood vanishes with a burn like it never existed in the first place but human blood doesn’t, it’s warm in a completely different way and it _stays_. He’d known that already, known it intimately, felt it beneath his fingers and washed it out of his hair, but there’s something very different about the splash of blood on your face when your knife finds a target and the burst of blood when a titan bites into your friend and spits their fucking head into your arms.

And Erwin had swung in, calling the retreat, grabbed Levi even though Levi could move but that was fine because Erwin was finally in command. He’d called the retreat, he’d been retreating, but Levi couldn’t fucking do it, couldn’t _breathe_. Levi had fired wires off and twisted away from Erwin and dove into the nearest body of water he could find.

Erwin wouldn’t do it now (or he hopes so – he shouldn’t have fucking done it then either), but he followed, shouting Levi’s name. Levi had emerged still bloody but it wasn’t just blood it was water too. And Erwin had been there, Erwin had said, “You’re clean enough for now. We’ll get back through the gate and you can finish.”

But there’s no clean enough now. Not when Erwin will come home with an open wound that can’t be treated like any of the others. It’s something that _festers_ , something that causes a quiet death that there’s not any escaping from, that you can’t be safe from unless you’re clean. It’s the one thing he can almost always control. If you clean something, it’s safer. It’s simple and straightforward and _true_ , and Levi’s fingers are in pain, but he’s in the kitchen and it’s progress. And fuck, he shouldn’t have started with the floor, he’s just going to have to clean the floor again in case something falls when he cleans the rest of the apartment.

The kitchen isn’t too big, though. Erwin can’t cook beyond the essentials you learn from living on your own, and Levi can’t cook anything beyond the shit any desperate kid can figure out from scraps and he boils everything, he boils absofuckinglutely _everything_. Erwin cooks for them. And they don’t live together, and Hanji comes over often too, and that’s where Levi cuts off the list of visitors because here there’s someone he can save right now right here if he does this right and thoroughly and _right_. He can keep Erwin safe by keeping things clean, and he moves on to the rest of the kitchen. He cleaned just a week ago, but it’s been a busy few days, fuck, he needs to redo everything anyway.

Levi moves back, though, finds the nearest chair and stretches his knees out and looks out the windowpanes (fuck, needs to clean those too) to see the sun has set. He doesn’t need light for this, he’s watched and washed and inspected Erwin’s apartment often enough to know where things are by touch. But he might miss something, so he lights lanterns, lights candles, lights fires, burns things until there's not a single corner he can't see.

He doesn’t know when Erwin will come home. He doesn’t even know if Erwin ever will come home. But the kitchen isn’t first priority, he realizes. It should be the bathroom. It’s unlikely that Erwin will come home and decide he wants to make soup. Bathrooms are a necessity, and absolute cesspools, and Levi drags his cleaning materials into the small bathroom. It’s small in size but it will take a long time to get _really_ clean, and clean means safe, and he can’t miss anything.

His hands are a mess, and his knees are sore, and this is probably really bad for his ankle, but he has a mission. Levi cleans every crevice and surface and curve in the bathroom, and even when it’s shining clean and pristine in the morning light, it’s still not _done_. He doesn’t know if he didn’t do it right, or if he’s missing something, or he just instinctively knows there’s something still dirty and threatening and dangerous, but he starts from the top, does it all over again. It isn’t until he washes the window and washes the walls and is stuck cursing at the stupid fucking ceiling that he can’t reach and can’t _wash and he needs to wash it_ that he realizes he has company.

The fear that suddenly grabs his heart and squeezes so hard it’s going to be pulled out is shocking, leaves him leaning against the (clean, safe, thank fuck) wall and thanking every single thing even remotely holy that it’s not Erwin. He's not ready for Erwin. It’s Hanji, being considerate enough to have a couple of what looks like handkerchiefs under her bare feet. He doesn’t have to redo the floor quite yet.

“It’s just an hour or two after dawn,” she says carefully. “Have you slept?”

Levi exhales, carefully sitting on the floor. He doesn’t know how clean his pants are anymore, doesn’t want to sit on something and have to clean it _again_. “I don’t have time. I only just finished the bathroom,” he says.

“You have as much time as you need,” Hanji says. “Erwin’s free to go, but if you aren’t ready for him, he’s not going to come in.”

So fucking typical, that he knows exactly what Levi’s doing. There’s no point in lying to Hanji, even less of a point to try and lie to Erwin, so he says, “I need more time. Keep him in the hospital, if you can.”

Fuck, he needs to clean Erwin’s office too. The maids never do it right.

“I’ll do my best! Oh, and he has no fever or any other signs of anything wrong with him other than, you know, the usual stuff that comes with losing an arm,” Hanji says. “Anything I can help you with?”

“No,” Levi says, but nods his appreciation.

She grins, winks at him, and Levi can hear her having a giddily fun time sliding across the floor, hear a twirl and a _wheee_ before she hits the door and Levi restrains a grimace because of that _fucking_ doorknob plaguing his mind.

Keeping Erwin from doing whatever he wants to do is usually a useless effort, not that Levi ever tries. Erwin plots and plans every part of his day, and Levi’s day, and Hanji’s day, and. But Erwin just has a ridiculous cunning brain that never shuts off, not unless he’s asleep and Levi hates watching him sleep, it’s _terrifying_ , always curls around his back or tucks himself against Erwin’s pulse, against his heart, against anything that can prove he’s alive when Levi’s eyes snap open in the middle of the night and see Erwin’s face looking soft and approachable and loose and all of that unshakable intensity is gone, and for a moment Levi thinks maybe it's gone forever.

Levi pushes up off of the floor, drags his things into the bedroom, and laundry takes too much time, and he looks at the bed that’s slightly mussed because Levi slept here with him, nothing but sleeping, nothing but bitching about everyday life and ignoring reality and shutting off their brains with Levi there to make sure it was safe and Erwin to make sure Levi was doing it right, didn’t miss anything. They’re not in love and never will be because that could cause problems, conflicts of interest they can’t afford.

Before Eren, Levi was the best weapon they had against titans. Even now, he’s the most reliable offensive tool humanity has, the most trustworthy tool in Erwin’s arsenal. If they were in love, Erwin might not use him. If they were in love, Levi might hesitate. If they’re in love, fuck knows what will happen when one of them really dies.

And all of the things he’s heard, all of those stories and songs, they don’t _fit_. Levi doesn’t know what Erwin feels, and doesn’t bother to guess what the fuck Erwin’s thinking at any given time because he’s probably thinking twenty things and Levi has a better chance of catching a house fly with a fishing net than catching half of them. But there’s no sweetness to it, to them. There’s no dreamy optimism or hope or whatever the fuck you call it when people hold hands and smile at each other and make plans and promises they don't mean to keep. He and Erwin don’t smile. Not often, at least.

No, it’s not love. It feels like the world is open air, life is pushing him forward, pushing higher, pushing as fast and far as he can get, and Erwin is the wire and anchor and direction and purpose. Saying that’s love would be like saying breathing’s a kind of religion. It just exists, it just _is_.

And Levi needs to clean. He needs to clean the bedroom. He needs to change the sheets, fuck knows that’s probably the filthiest area of the entire apartment even though Levi makes sure they’re changed and washed once a week _minimum_ and there’s no knowing whether the mattress is still alright and for some reason Levi can’t move. He has the bucket and he has rags and his sponge and he stands in the doorframe, staring into the bedroom that he needs to clean but for some reason doesn’t want to.

It’s not quite wanting to do it. It’s not quite needing to do it, either – Levi knows this is fucking ridiculous, what he’s doing right now. He knows he doesn’t need to clean the apartment this thoroughly, but at the same time he _needs to_ , because clean means safe. But the bedroom is clean enough, somehow.

The bedroom is clean enough, because it’s safe. And safety comes from being clean, so if he feels safe, it’s probably because it’s clean. Right? It’s reasonable when Levi looks around the room, too – no dust, no cobwebs, no dull wood, no tarnished metal, no signs of anything even a little bit dirty. Nothing but an untidy bed, and that’s part of what makes it safe.

Levi’s pretty sure he’s completely fucking insane and is going to hate himself in about twenty minutes for this decision, but suddenly he just wants Erwin to come home, wants nothing else but them being safe in this bed.

And if it isn’t clean enough, if it isn’t safe enough, Erwin would know.

He turns away from the bedroom, drags his cleaning supplies along with him back into the kitchen, which still needs work. But it’s work he can do when Erwin’s home and being suitably ruthless and brilliant and generally being himself, probably propped up in bed with papers he’s not supposed to be able to get his hands on. 

Hand on.

That might take some adjusting.

Levi’s fingers are starting to really bleed now, not just the nicks and scratches and other wounds that come with heavy cleaning. He’s done, for now. He can only do more damage than good when he’s in this state.

But there’s no way to avoid the fact he _needs_ to clean the doorknob, whether or not his fingertips are bleeding. It’ll be his last stop for the day. Or for now, at least. He can get back to the rest of it.

When Levi opens the door and sees Erwin sitting patiently (and so fucking pale) on the landing, in a chair someone obviously set up for him in expectation of a long wait, he doesn’t know why, but everything inside of him sags, relieved, thinking _it makes sense now_. It makes sense that he can stop, because Erwin’s here. Clean means safe, but Erwin means safe too, for some fucked up reason.

Erwin is pale, and leaning back in his chair, sagging, and when he sees Levi he doesn’t do anything beyond look at him for a long moment before saying, “It’s okay now.”

“Liar,” Levi says.

“It _will_ be okay,” Erwin corrects.

Levi wasn’t always this bad, but year after year of surviving when others died, of killing what others thought was unkillable, of charging into places and somehow coming back out, it got to this point. They’ve reached this point.

“I’m still not done,” Levi says, and sets to work on the doorknob. “You should’ve stayed in the hospital.”

“Other soldiers need the bed more than I do,” Erwin says, even though he's missing a fucking arm, and just keeps watching and watching and watching. Levi’s bloody hands wipe at the doorknob, and then he has to clean the blood off, and then he has to clean the blood off from cleaning the blood off, and finally after who the fuck knows how long Erwin says, “I won’t touch it. You can finish when your hands are in better shape.”

“What if I can’t?” Levi asks, because this, he can admit. Erwin knows how fucked up he is with his cleaning and orderliness and they all are, in their own way. Because they’re the ones that survive. Hanji treats friends and enemies alike because there’s no point in getting angry anymore. Levi isn’t a fool, he knows he cleans because it’s one of the few things he can be certain of, one of the few things he can control and _know_ is done and _safe_ , this small thing, this stupid fucking tiny deadly thing.

Erwin stands on unsteady legs, towering over Levi as he kneels in front of the open door, and Erwin has this. This is how he survives. Erwin puts a clumsy hand on Levi’s head, fingers growing more confident with every moment Levi is still, his hands raised and ready to attack anything threatening, be it dirt or human or monster or blood or whatever else Erwin directs him towards. “It’s enough for now,” he says.

Levi cleans, but Erwin commands. Erwin stops him, because he trusts Erwin in a way that scares Levi when he lets himself think about it. Erwin says it’s enough, and it is.

This is how it works.

Levi nearly kills himself with a wire wrapped around the base of his neck and Erwin is there, Erwin cuts him loose and brings him down, Erwin puts him in a cravat because humanity’s greatest weapon has to be peerless, look _flawless_ , and he says it’ll never happen again, and it doesn’t.

Levi freezes for one crucial moment on his first expedition outside of the wall with his friend’s blood fresh and hot on his body and his friend’s eyes-wide severed head in his arms and Erwin is there, Erwin washes him off when they're safe because Levi’s hands are too dirty to do any good, Erwin says he won’t be paralyzed like that again, won't freeze up again, and he doesn't. 

Erwin tells him to do something, Erwin commands him, Erwin tells him what needs to be done and directs him in how to do it, and Levi can _do it_.

Against all odds, against the number of people they’ve seen eaten and shattered and ripped apart, against the cheers and anger and disdain their regiment faces, they keep fighting. They stay together. They survive, and they fight, and they stay together, and somehow, _somehow_ , they live.

But Levi wasn’t there and Erwin lost an arm ( _but not his life_ , the part of his brain that sounds like Hanji points out, joyous in a way Levi and Erwin can’t be) and suddenly Levi needs to finish cleaning, he _needs to_ , needs it like air and light and food and wires and anchors in the air, but Erwin says it again. He’s stupid enough to get down on his knees next to Levi, his one remaining arm not quite holding Levi as he says, “Levi, it’s enough.”

And it is.

He sags against Erwin, doesn’t even mean to do it, but Erwin's warm and alive and doesn’t object to the blood Levi is getting on his white shirt. He’ll do the laundry later.

“Don’t touch anything in the kitchen yet. The bathroom’s clean,” _safe_ , “and the bedroom’s safe too,” Levi says, and tries to focus again. Which he can do. He scowls when he realizes what exactly is going on here, and it’s fucking ridiculous with their height differences but Levi stands and drags Erwin up with him. “What the fuck are you doing on the floor?”

“Doing what needs to be done,” Erwin says simply, standing steady even if he looks so, so pale. But alive. “This doesn’t look like staying off of your ankle.”

“I was doing what needs to be done,” Levi echoes, with just enough disdain that Erwin’s lips quirk, an unspoken _touché_. “You should be in bed.”

“Why do you think I came home?” Erwin asks, and Levi is _not_ touching that one. Erwin steps away and walks, slow and unsteady but all on his own, and Levi lets him. Blood loss is hard to get over, takes a while to recover, but their people have plenty of experience with it, and Erwin is far from suicidal. Everything that can be done has been done. Now, it’s all down to damage control.

When Erwin reaches the bedroom, he stops, hand gripping the doorframe tightly. Levi moves forward, just enough to be ready to catch him if he falls, but instead he finds himself staring into Erwin’s stunned eyes.

Levi frowns. “What?”

“You-” he makes a motion, or tries to, and winces because he tried to wave a right arm he doesn’t have anymore and Levi immediately looks at the bandages, but there’s no blood. Just pain, and a missing arm. Erwin takes a moment, breathes in and breathes out and then starts again. “The bedroom’s clean?”

A scream of denial immediately erupts in Levi’s mind, a roaring compulsion of _no it fucking isn’t keep him out of there it isn’t safe it isn’t safe you need to wash everything again and again and again and again_ and Levi bites down on his tongue, grabs a bloody handful of Erwin’s shirt, grounds himself.

“The bedroom’s safe,” Levi says.

They both know that Levi has just gotten worse and worse and _worse_ about this stupid fucking urge to clean, and the tighter he holds it in the wilder it goes when he has to give in and let it release. He can’t remember it ever being _this_ bad, this shrieking itch in his bleeding fingers to throw Erwin back into the hospital and clean nonstop for a week, a month, a year, but Levi stands by his words. He stands by what he feels, about the clean warm sunlight and slightly mussed four day old sheets. About the warmth he can feel beneath Erwin’s shirt. About the light in Erwin’s eyes and the ruthless cogs in his brain and the way he lets go of the doorframe to wrap his hand around Levi’s dirty fingers.

The bedroom is safe, the bed is safe, and it’s where he wants Erwin to be.

They live lives of desperation – desperate plotting, desperate cutting, desperate kissing, desperate hands and desperate breaths and desperate foolish hoping, pointlessly trying to grab at some sort of future, some sort of control. There’s desperation in the way he watches Erwin lay down, desperation in the way Levi lets himself curl around him, desperation in the way he buries his forehead against Erwin’s sweat-damp neck.

But Erwin isn’t desperate for once. He has one fucking arm and lost only god knows how much blood and there’s so much else to worry about (infection bacteria gangrene parasites sickness fever death) but he still keeps a hold of Levi’s hand with the one he has left.

“Don’t you fucking dare go out without me again,” Levi says.

“Insubordinate,” Erwin says, muttering the words into the pillow, exhausted.

“Damn right I am,” Levi says, which is such a fucking lie that even with Erwin mostly asleep he still huffs out a laugh into the pillow.

He holds Erwin with a grip that’s probably too tight, probably gets blood on the sheets, probably won’t ever really wash out of Erwin’s shirt no matter how hard Levi scrubs, and doesn’t worry about it. It’s enough. Erwin’s pulse gets stronger and slower with every breath, and his face is tight and pained and alive, and it’s enough.

(It’s enough.)

(It’s enough.)

(It's enough.)


End file.
